Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
20. The eve of office
Thenceforward Jan's career was that of the cricketer who made no indelible mark as anything else. Like other people, he had his ordinary life to lead. Like them, he had to rush out every day to early school. In form, he had to work harder than most to keep afloat. "Solid work in the bullies," as the Magazine put it, eventually landed him in the Fifteen. But there was less glory there than in the Eleven, for the school was still playing its own age-old brand of football -- although there was already talk of adopting the Rugby rules -- and apart from the Old Boys' Match no outside fixtures were possible. And Jan was placed more than once in the Mile and the Steeplechase without winning either. None of these were his strong points, though he took them seriously at the time. They kept him fit during the winter, but it was not they that made his name. Some of his bowling analyses, on the other hand, were as unforgettable as the date of the Norman Conquest, and were instantly and equally imprinted on every mind in the school. So too was the image of him on the Upper, with his Eleven cap pulled down over his eyes and a grim twinkle under the peak.
His second year in the Eleven was nearly -- not quite -- as successful as his first. He took even more Haileybury and Repton wickets, but experienced batsmen in other teams sometimes made almost light of that clockwork off-break of his. The cheery Swiller Wilman (who owed his nickname to his notorious teetotalism) again compiled his usual century for the Old Boys. It was a hotter summer, and the wickets a trifle faster than those after Jan's own heart. Still, he had a fine season and a marvellously happy one. He was now somebody in the Eleven, not a mere upstart bowler of no previous standing, not a fish out of water. Bruce, the new captain, was a good fellow who not only always gave Jan the choice of ends and an absolute say in the placing of his field, but took his best bowler's advice on all sorts of points. Jan found himself in a position of high authority without the cares of office, and the day came when he appreciated the distinction.
Stretton and Jellicoe were in the team for their second and last year, and the All Ages cup remained undisturbed on the baize shelf in Heriot's hall. Crabtree, moreover, was still the captain of a house in which his word was martial law. But he too was leaving. All the bigwigs were, except Jan himself. After the holidays Heriot had to face a younger house than for some years past, with a colourless polly in command till Christmas, and only old Chips to succeed him.
Chips was now a polly himself, being actually in the Upper Sixth, and he now edited the precious Magazine to which he had so long contributed. This gave him his own standing in the school, and he had long outgrown -- or been lured out of -- the priggishness of his earlier days. Not only that; his old enthusiasm was often missing too. It had been his weak patch of boyhood, which he had struck later than most. He was an ardent wicket-keeper who had incurred a flogging in his saintlier days by cutting a detention to keep wicket on the Lower, and he was still on the Lower, though he thought he ought to have been in one of the Middle teams. In the winter months, with his new Lillywhite usually concealed about his person, he used to dream of runs from his own unhandy bat. But he knew in his heart that his only place in the game was as student and trumpeter of glories beyond his grasp. He was frank about it in his lament for the examinations he had failed properly to revise for.
But 'tis no use lamenting. What is done
You couldn't undo if you tried.
Oh, if only they'd set us some Wisden,
Or Lillywhite's Guide!
Many fellows liked old Chips nowadays and even took a charitable view of his writings, but few would have picked him out as a born leader of men.
Meanwhile Evan Devereux had been elected Captain of Games, a most important officer in the Easter term, the games in question being nothing of the kind except in an Olympic sense, but just the ordinary athletic sports. The Captain of Games arranged the heats, fixed the times, acted as starter, and exercised an overall control that just suited Evan. He proved himself a born master of ceremonies, with a jealous eye for detail, but a little apt to fuss and strut. He dressed well, and had a pointed way of taking off his hat to the masters' ladies. There were those, of course, who crudely described his mannerisms as mere roll; but on the whole it would have been hard to find a keener or more capable Captain of Games.
The office was usually held by a member of the Eleven or the Fifteen. Evan was in neither, though on the edge of both. On the other hand, he was a polly and high in the Upper Sixth, having lost neither his flair for acquiring knowledge nor his inveterate horror of incurring rebuke. It is at first sight a little odd that such a blameless boy should ever have made the bosom friend he did. Sandham was a big fellow low down in the school and in another house, but a handsome daredevil of strong but questionable character, whom it suited to have a leading polly for his friend.
One hesitates to add, in case it is thought that this accounted for Evan's side of the friendship, that Sandham was the younger son of a rather prominent peer. He was not the only fellow whose parentage was marked in the school list by the curious prefix of "Mr." But the others were nobodies, and Evan did not make up to them. Yet in the aristocracy of sport he could bow as low as the next boy, and Sandham was an athlete of the first water -- in the Fifteen and the Eleven, and winner of the Steeplechase, Hurdles, Hundred Yards, Quarter Mile and Wide Jump. He became Athletic Champion by a large margin, and wore his halo with a rakish indifference which lent colour to the report that "Mr" Sandham had already been bunked from Eton before old Thrale gave him another chance.
"He's a marvellous athlete, whatever else he is," said Chips to Jan on the last Sunday of the Easter term.
"I'm blowed if I know what else he is," replied Jan. "But I wouldn't see quite so much of him if I were Evan."
"If you were Evan, you'd jolly well see all you could of anybody at the top of the tree!"
"Look, Chips, dry up! Evan's pretty near the top himself."
"Are you going to stick him in the Eleven?"
"If he's good enough, and I hope he will be."
"Of course it's expected of you."
"Who expects it?"
"Sandham for one. And Devereux himself for another. Look how they stopped to make up to you when they overtook us just now!"
Two faults which Chips still retained were touchiness and jealousy, especially where Jan was concerned. As for Jan, if he had been on brink of Evan's friendship last summer, Sandham had usurped his place; but Jan still could -- still had to -- rise to Evan's defence.
"I don't know what you mean. Evan's a friend of mine, and of course I've seen a lot of Sandham. They only asked if I was going to get any practice in the holidays."
"They took good care to let you know they were going to have some. So Evan's going to stay with Sandham's people, is he?"
"So Sandham said."
"And they're going to have a professional down from Lord's!"
"Well, they might be worse employed."
"So they might. But I'd rather like to know what they're up to this very minute."
They were on one of the undulating country roads that radiated from the little town like tentacles -- the Binchester road, as it happened, a mile past Castle Hill -- and were strolling lazily between the jewelled hedgerows of early April. They had now caught a fresh sight of Evan and Sandham on the skyline, climbing a gate into the fields that led down to Bardney Wood.
Jan stopped. "I votes we go some other way. I don't like spying on chaps, even if it's only a case of a cigarette." That was not wholly true, for he had had no qualms about watching those boys at Castle Hill eighteen months before. But this was an entirely different matter.
So another way they went, their conversation killed stone dead as both thought back to those events at Castle Hill. Two boys in a wood then -- two of Evan's bosoms. Two boys heading for a wood now -- Evan and his current bosom. Jan's mind recoiled from the similarities. As if his mind were on bosoms too, Chips suddenly ran his arm through Jan's, and for once Jan allowed it to stay there.
"Isn't it beastly to be so near the end of our time, Tiger?" Chips was determined to move to a new subject. "Only one more term!"
"It is a bit," agreed Jan lukewarmly, as he pulled himself together. "I know you feel it, but I sometimes think I'd have done better to leave a year ago."
Chips looked round at him as they walked.
"And you Captain of Cricket!"
"That's why," said Jan in the grim old way.
"But, my dear chap, it's by far the biggest honour you can possibly have!"
"I know all that, Chipsy. But there's a good deal more in it than honour and glory. There's any amount to do. You're responsible for all sorts of things. Bruce used to tell me last year. It isn't only writing out the order, nor yet changing your bowling and altering the field."
"No. You've first got to catch your Eleven."
"And not only that, but all the other teams on the Upper, and captains for both the other grounds. You're responsible for the lot, and you've got to make up your mind you can't please everybody."
Chips said nothing. He would have loved the unexalted post of Captain of the Middle, but he had no claim to that, and evidently Jan had no intention of favouring his friends.
"One ought to know every fellow in the school by sight," he was saying. "But I don't know half as many as I did. Do you remember how you were always finding out fellows' names, Chips, our first year or so? You didn't rest till you could put a name to everybody above us in the school. But these days neither of us take much stock of the crowd below."
"I find the house takes me all my time, and you must feel the same about the Eleven, only much more so. By Jove, I'd give all I'm ever likely to have on earth to change places with you!"
"And I'm not sure I wouldn't change places with you. Somehow things always look different when you really get anywhere," sighed Jan, discovering an eternal truth for himself.
"But to captain the Eleven!"
"To make a good captain. That's the thing."
"But you will, Jan. Look at your bowling."
"It's not everything. You've got to drive your team. It's no good only putting your own shoulder to the wheel. And they may be a difficult team to drive."
"Sandham may. And if Devereux --"
"Sandham's not the only one," interrupted Jan, who was not talking gloomily, but only frankly as he felt. "There's Goose and Ibbotson -- who are in already -- and Chilton who's bound to get in. A regular gang of them, and I'm not in the gang, and never was."
"But you're in another class, Jan!" argued Chips, forgetting himself entirely in the affectionate concern for a friend which was his finest point. "You're one of the very best bowlers there ever was in the school."
"I may have been. I'm not now. But I might be again if I could get that leg-break."
"You shall practice it every day on our lawn when you come to us these holidays."
"Thanks, old chap. Everybody says it's what I want. That uncle of mine said so the very first match we played together, when he was home again last year."
"Well, he ought to know."
The conversation turned into a highly technical discussion in which puny Chips, who would never get into any eleven, held his own and more. The strange fact was that he still knew more about cricket than the captain of the school team. At heart, indeed, he was the more complete cricketer of the two, for Jan was just a natural left-hand bowler, only too well aware of his limitations, and in some danger of losing his gift by laboriously cultivating a quite different knack which was not his by nature.
If only Jan himself could bowl better than ever, or even up to his first year's form, then he would carry the whole side to victory on his shoulders. If only he could overcome his current problem. The trouble had begun about the time of the last Old Boys' Match, when Jan had heard more than enough of that damned break which he did not have. Egged on by Captain Ambrose in the summer holidays, he had tried it with some success in village cricket, and had thought about it all the winter. Now it was uppermost in his mind. Was he going to make the ball break both ways this season? It mattered more than the constitution of the Eleven, more than the personal relations of its members, more than Evan's inclusion in it. Possibly it mattered more than his own muddled view, that hotchpotch of yearning and jealousy, of Evan himself.
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